f secession even appear to be acknowledged. Some men would have
been glad to hang Jefferson Davis as a traitor, yet would have been ready
to negotiate with him as with a foreign king. Lincoln, who would not
have hurt one hair of his head, and would have talked things over with
Mr. Davis quite pleasantly, would have died rather than treat with him on
the footing that he was head of an independent Confederacy. The blood
shed might have been shed for nothing if he had done so. But to many
men, in the long agony of the war and its disappointments, the plain
position became much obscured. The idea in various forms that by some
sort of negotiation the issue could be evaded began to assert itself
again and again. The delusion was freely propagated that the South was
ready to give in if only Lincoln would encourage its approaches. It was
sheer delusion. Jefferson Davis said frankly to the last that the
Confederacy would have "independence or extermination," and though
Stephens and many others spoke of peace to the electors in their own
States, Jefferson Davis had his army with him, and the only result which
agitation against him ever produced was that two months before the
irreparable collapse the chief command under him was given to his most
faithful servant Lee. But it was useless for Lincoln to expose the
delusion in the plainest terms; it survived exposure and became a danger
to Northern unity.

Lincoln therefore took a strange course, which generally succeeded. When
honest men came to him and said that the South could be induced to yield,
he proposed to them that they should go to Jefferson Davis and see for
themselves. The Chairman of the Republican organisation ultimately
approached Lincoln on this matter at the request of a strong committee;
but he was a sensible man whom Lincoln at once converted by drafting the
precise message that would have to be sent to the Confederate President.
On two earlier occasions such labourers for peace were allowed to go
across the lines and talk with Davis; it could be trusted to their honour
to pretend to no authority; they had interesting talks with the great
enemy, and made religious appeals to him or entertained him with wild
proposals for a joint war on France over Mexico. They returned,
converted also. But in July Horace Greeley, the great editor, who was
too opinionated to be quite honest, was somehow convinced that Southern
agents at Niagara, who had really come to ho